A while back Apple wrote a Mac app called Demo Monkey that gave you a list of
things you could click on to put them on the pasteboard. It made presenting
code a little bit easier since you could break up what you wanted to show into
chunks, weave it into a narrative, and paste as you go to demonstrate.

But that required having a window visible on your Mac with a list of clips. And
if you’re like me, you still needed script notes somewhere near by to stay on
track and remember what clip goes where in the flow.

That’s why we wrote KeyGrip. After iterating on a few different ideas, we
settled on a Mac server and a Universal iOS client. Run the client on an iPad
Mini and it shows your presenter notes interspersed with code snippets—all
generated from a Markdown file. If you tap on any of the code snippets,
it instantly shows up on your Mac’s pasteboard.

The Mac and iOS apps communicate seamlessly over Bonjour. All you have to do is
make sure they have the same string identifier so they can find each other. The
Mac server also live pushes changes to the iOS client while you work on the
Markdown script. You can get into a slick editing workflow where you adjust
your notes and try out your code examples.

Yeah, I’m biased. But I gotta say…this thing is like magic.

You can download a binary of the Mac server right from the README. You can
download the source and build the iOS app to install it on your favorite
device. Enjoy!

Oh, and special thanks to Derek Briggs for the icon. He’s got plans to
help us polish up the interface a bit over time, too. :)